THE ARRIVAL
Received the car at the end of November 2018, and even though it was running, it was running very poorly.
I started by ordering all the bushings for the under frame as well as new steering rods and king pins.
In my garage the room is very limited, and to do the few things that need urgent attention underneath, it needed to be driven to a shop where it could be lifted.
To do that I needed some kind of permit to drive around, as a recent import it did not have a license plate yet, and to get an antique car plate it needs to be inspected, comply with a number of requisites, i.e. age, be at least 90% original, good general condition, etc., and... the authority that had to do the inspection did not have any more appointments available and were to close from December 15 to January 15, so finally I managed to get a 30 day permit to drive around.
Took it to a shop to change the steering rods that were bent and a few bushings and drove back home and didn't quite make it, the engine flooded and quit and there was no way to get it going again, as I was only a couple of blocks away, my wife towed me home.
Ordered the carburetor rebuilding kits and started waiting for the parts to arrive, in the meantime I applied myself to get a period radio and refurbish an instrument cluster that had been given to me by the seller of the car.
I also started looking for places where the body work restoration could be done, there are a few excellent and very expensive places around Mexico City, Querétaro, and other cities in the country, I checked with the three or four better known ones and they told me to call them back in about a year to see of they could accommodate me, besides, a friend that has a couple of beautiful collection cars (among them a 1937, Rolls Royce Phantom III in museum condition) talking about one particular place, he said "oh, that guy will charge you about 100,000", I thought that he was talking Mexican pesos which is the equivalent of about US$5,000, and I said that that seemed quite reasonable, and he said "man, you are wealthier than I thought" and my answered was that for a body restoration MEX$100,000 seemed reasonable, and he said "I never said pesos, I meant US Dollars!".
From another collector, I heard that that shop, whose owner never gives even a rough order of magnitude estimate, if you ask for one, he is not interested in your work.
So, I went to a very good body shop that has done some minor work for our cars through out the years and asked him if he thought that he could do it, he said that he wanted to see the car first, so we made an appointment and told me that he could do it, gave a ROM estimate and said that he could start work at the en of January, but that it was going to be a long process because he had to take care of his daily work with his regular clients. We agreed that he was going to call me at the end of January to drive the car to his shop.
I also started looking for places where the body work restoration could be done, there are a few excellent and very expensive places around Mexico City, Querétaro, and other cities in the country, I checked with the three or four better known ones and they told me to call them back in about a year to see of they could accommodate me, besides, a friend that has a couple of beautiful collection cars (among them a 1937, Rolls Royce Phantom III in museum condition) talking about one particular place, he said "oh, that guy will charge you about 100,000", I thought that he was talking Mexican pesos which is the equivalent of about US$5,000, and I said that that seemed quite reasonable, and he said "man, you are wealthier than I thought" and my answered was that for a body restoration MEX$100,000 seemed reasonable, and he said "I never said pesos, I meant US Dollars!".
From another collector, I heard that that shop, whose owner never gives even a rough order of magnitude estimate, if you ask for one, he is not interested in your work.
So, I went to a very good body shop that has done some minor work for our cars through out the years and asked him if he thought that he could do it, he said that he wanted to see the car first, so we made an appointment and told me that he could do it, gave a ROM estimate and said that he could start work at the en of January, but that it was going to be a long process because he had to take care of his daily work with his regular clients. We agreed that he was going to call me at the end of January to drive the car to his shop.
Comments
Post a Comment